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White Paper Wednesday: Microsoft Resources

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012

by: Chris Knotts, PMP – ASPE Creative Director

Microsoft is one of the original technology giants of our age, and even as innovative competitors and disruptive technology give rise to increasing corporate challenges, they continue to be highly relevant in today’s business world. Here at ASPE-IT we’ve been teaching on Microsoft technologies for years, but it continues to be exciting to watch their activity and to teach skills related to their products. With today’s advances in cloud computing, data management, and operating system power, Microsoft is driving some pretty versatile and innovative tools. We have a number of white papers that take you through some of these tools, and we hope you’ll find them useful as we outline some current Microsoft products and provide some specific “how-to” expertise.

Download all five white papers now!

Click to continue »

Posted in ASPE, ASPE-IT, Exchange, Free, IT Professionals, Microsoft, White Paper, Windows, Windows 7 | Comments Off

Web Seminar Recap: Taking a Look at Service Pack 1 for Sever 2008 R2 and Windows 7

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

Microsoft has finally rolled out Service Pack 1 for Sever 2008 R2 and Windows 7.  Along with providing continuing improvements to the Windows Operating System (OS), SP1 will help maintain and keep your PC up-to-date, send constant updates to the Windows 7 platform, swiftly carry out collective updates all at once, meet your users’ requirements for better business mobility, provide a complete set of virtualization innovations, and offer an easier Service Pack deployment model for better IT efficiency.  On Tuesday, April 12th, ASPE Instructor Anthony Ungruhe presented the free web seminar “Taking a Look at Service Pack 1 for Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.”  In this web seminar, Anthony examined the powerful new features supplied by SP1, including Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX, and the improvements it’s made since the last SP.  Listen to the recording of this web seminar in its entirety by clicking View Event Recordings (at the top right).  Learn how Service Pack 1 affects your server and clients.

Posted in IT Professionals, Microsoft, SQL Server, Web Seminar, Windows, Windows 7, deployment | Comments Off

5 Strategies, Tools and Tips to Prepare for Windows 7 Deployment

Friday, November 12th, 2010

Post contributed by ASPE Web Seminar Presenter Pete Zerger.

If your organization is still running Windows XP, you are likely facing a Windows 7 upgrade in the near future. This can be a daunting task, but here are a few tools and tips to ensure that when the time arrives, you are ready to meet the challenge.

1) Align upgrade efforts with hardware refresh if you can

A great way to ensure your hardware is Windows 7 compatible is to deploy new hardware in conjunction with your Windows 7 deployment. This will reduce driver compatibility issues and newer hardware will deliver better performance. If circumstances dictate that you use existing hardware, further testing with existing printer and peripheral drivers is important since those tend to be the most poorly supported.

2) Leverage Microsoft Tools to Assess Your Orgs “Windows 7 Readiness”

Once you’ve accessed readiness System Center Configuration Manager 2007 and the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 provide the features to facilitate light touch or hands free OS deployment. The Springboard Series Windows 7 IT Pro Work Template: Windows 7 Deployment Plan from Microsoft is a helpful job aid that provides milestones and other guidance Windows 7 deployment project.

3) Minimize impact to user productivity with User State Migration

Helpdesk calls will be fewer and users will be happier and more productive if their Windows 7 environment bears some resemblance to their normal XP working environment is maintained through the migration.

The Windows User State Migration Tool (USMT) 4.0 is now installed as part of the Windows Automated Installation Kit. You can use USMT 4.0 to streamline and simplify user-profile migration during large deployments of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems. USMT captures user accounts, user files, operating system settings, and application settings, and then migrates them to a new Windows installation. You can use USMT for both side-by-side and wipe-and-load migrations.

4) Assess Infrastructure Compatibility BEFORE Deployment

It’s important to ensure that IT infrastructure, such as DHCP, DNS and Active Directory, are solid so they can provide a strong foundation for Windows 7 deployment.  File server space will also need to be made available to support User State Migration.

5) Identify your application compatibility strategy for incompatible applications

While most of your applications will work fine in Windows 7, you may well run into a few that won’t. If your move to Windows 7 comes before you retire all your incompatible apps, you will need to look at some techniques you can use to run apps that aren’t compatible with Windows 7 on the new operating system. The best strategy to determine which applications will and won’t work on Windows 7 is to load them on a Windows 7 machine and test them. For those that just won’t run, you have several options for coexistence:

  • Terminal Services - One way to deal with incompatible applications is to run them in a remote virtual machine with a compatible (downlevel) OS. You can do this with a Terminal Services and placing an icon for your app on the desktop or start menu.
  • XP Virtual Machine (XP Mode)
    You could also Windows XP apps on a Windows 7 desktop by running a copy of Windows XP in a virtual machine (VM) on your Windows 7 host. Microsoft provides a feature called Windows XP Mode. This is a free download for Windows 7 that provides a virtual machine for running incompatible legacy apps.
  • Application Virtualization or VDI – Application virtualization layers replace part of the runtime environment normally provided by the operating system. Application virtualization options include Microsoft Application Virtualization, Citrix XenApp and Novell ZENworks Application Virtualization.

Remember that the Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) version 5.5 can help you inventory applications, analyze compatibility, and create compatibility fixes for applications.

Conclusion
I hope you’ve found these tips helpful. If you’d like to learn more about Windows 7 deployment, attend “Planning your Desktop Upgrade to Windows 7”, Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 12:00 pm Eastern Time. You can register for this free seminar HERE.

Pete Zerger is an IT consultant, blogger, author, speaker and Microsoft MVP focusing on MS Microsoft System Center and enterprise virtualization. He is a co-founder of systemcentercentral.com a web community dedicated to support of Microsoft System Center management technologies.

Posted in Windows, Windows 7, deployment, strategy | Comments Off

Deploying Windows 7 Device Drivers with MDT 2010

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

ASPE-IT instructor Tom Carpenter provides some new thoughts.

One of the key benefits of the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 is the ability to deploy your Windows 7 device drivers automatically. Rather than manually installing device drivers after the Windows 7 installation completes (like all of us techies do at home), you can incorporate the drivers into your deployment so that they are installed automatically. In order to do this, you’ll need to keep a few important facts in mind:

  1. You will need individual drivers for each component. Check the hardware vendor’s website for these drivers.
  2. You will need INF-based drivers and not executable installs. All Windows 7 drivers are INF-based. Some vendors simply deploy them using installation executables to simplify the process for the average user.
  3. You may need both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. If you deploy a mixed environment, go ahead a download both the 32-bit and 64-bit drivers so that you are ready for all deployment types. Click to continue »

Posted in Drivers, Microsoft, Toolkit, Windows, Windows 7, deployment | Comments Off

Windows 7 Rollout Tips from the Trenches

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

ASPE-IT instructor Tom Carpenter provides some new thoughts.

I’ve been working with Windows 7 now for more than two years, when you include the betas of the product. It seems like only yesterday that it was released, but it will actually be the one year anniversary in just a few days. What does this mean about rollouts? It means that many more people will begin their deployments of Windows 7 in the next six months than we saw deployed in the past 12 months.

I’ve planned on 8 full-scale deployments and have consulted on more than 20 in the past year. In that time, I’ve come up with three major tips related to rollouts. I’m going to share all three with you in this post. Click to continue »

Posted in Office 2007, Uncategorized, Windows, Windows 7, deployment | Comments Off

Understanding MDT 2010 Task Sequences

Monday, October 4th, 2010

ASPE-IT instructor Tom Carpenter shares thoughts on MDT 2010 Task Sequences:

In previous blog posts, I’ve talked about the important considerations to be made before beginning a deployment project and the MAP toolkit, which can be used to create a hardware inventory of your environment. In this blog post, I’d like to talk to you about the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 and specifically about task sequences.

When you create a deployment share using the Deployment Workbench that comes with MDT 2010, you can import operating systems into this share. You can then add applications, packages, drivers and task sequences in order to provide deployment options. After teaching more than 30 Windows 7 classes and managing more than a dozen deployment projects, it has become very clear to me that the task sequences are the most confusing part to most deployment engineers. Let me explain them to you in the simplest way I know how. Click to continue »

Posted in MDT Task Sequences, Uncategorized, Windows 7, deployment | 2 Responses »

Hardware Inventory Reports for Windows 7 Deployment

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

ASPE-IT instructor Tom Carpenter starts a series of posts on Windows 7 deployment:

Many small and medium businesses lack a good hardware inventory management tool. Even larger companies often fail to inventory their hardware in detail. By hardware inventory, I mean a detailed database of computers and the components in those computers. For example, do you know which machines in your environment are ready to support Windows 7? Do you know which machines can be upgraded through memory or hard drive upgrades in order to run Windows 7 efficiently? Do you know which machines must be replaced because they cannot run Windows 7? Click to continue »

Posted in Crystal Reports, Hardware, MAP toolkit, SQL Server, Windows, Windows 7, Windows XP, deployment, download | Comments Off

Windows 7 Deployment: The First 3 Things to Consider

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

ASPE-IT instructor Tom Carpenter starts a series of posts on Windows 7 deployment:

When planning Windows 7 deployments, three things about your existing environment must be considered.

First, you have to look at the network infrastructure and ask yourself if it is ready to handle Windows 7. For example, if you leave the IPv6 protocol enabled on your Windows 7 machines, they will generate significant local traffic on their subnets. When upgrading from Windows XP without IPv6 to Windows 7 with IPv6, expect an increase in traffic somewhere between 2 and 4 percent.

Second, you have to consider the existing hardware in your environment. Will these computers handle Windows 7? More importantly, will they run Windows 7 with acceptable performance from your users’ perspectives? The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit can help you with this.

Third, you’ll need to think about the applications in your environment. Believe it or not, this is where we’ve found that most of your planning time is spent. It can be an exhausting exercise to inventory all of your applications and then determine whether they work with Windows 7 or not. Thankfully, Microsoft provides the Application Compatibility Toolkit to help you with this task. (I’ll tackle this tool and more in a future posts.)

For now, take this important fact to your next IT planning meeting: Windows 7 deployments will take far more planning than any other deployment since Windows 95. Remember, with Windows 95, we went from the 16-bit world to the 32-bit world. With Windows 7, most organizations are moving from the 32-bit world to the 64-bit world. In the coming weeks, I’ll be providing you with the tools, techniques and tips to ease your journey.

Where do I get the Windows 7 deployment tools? How do I use them? What has been discovered during early rollouts of Windows 7? These are the issues I’ll be posting about in the future, if you have questions that I have not mentioned, let us know!

Tom is the author of “Why Windows 7 is Better Than Vista” which can be found along with other free downloads on ASPE’s Special Offers Page.

You can find Tom Carpenter’s thoughts on twitter, or on his blog TomCarpenter.net and Tom’s books are available through Amazon.com.

Tom teaches public courses but is also available for a personalized on-site training courses that can be tailored for your companies needs, for more information please visit our On-Site page.

If you are interested in Windows 7 training check out our courses:

Hands-On Installing, Administering & Supporting Microsoft Windows 7

Hands-On Deploying Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 R2

Posted in Microsoft, Windows, Windows 7, deployment | Comments Off